SE IV Source Code
 

What would be really cool is if Aaron released or offered for sale the source code for SEIV either with the games re-sale launch or when SE V is released.

What would be the possibilities, pro's and con's of having the source code on hand? Would it invite cheating in PBW games? Or would it result in fan based bug fixes for known issues? I would suspect that both would be likely however more good than bad would come of it.

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

It's very likely that a lot of code from SE:IV will make it in SE:V and to release it could result in extra 'competition' against SE:V, and perhaps suggest ways of cheating in SE:V pbw?

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

I doubt we will get IV. III is possible.

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

I agree, III is more likely than IV but still... It would be nice.

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

Well, if he did make the source code available it would open up a lot of possibilities for all kinds of new mods. All those things that are not moddable right now because they're hard-coded, if we could bring them all out to external text files as well, that would be excellent. Maybe we can make the A.I. smarter, too, though that would be a lot of work.

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

I do not believe that they will sell or give us the source code because if we improve the SE-IV game it will be a competitor for SE-V! Most of us will buy SE-V by hook or by crook, but maybe not all.

And yes, it would be cool to make that hard-coded things moddable but on the other side do you really want to know every algorithms? That can improve but also kill gameplay(-feeling).

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

The source to SE 2 is a possibility.

SE3 was reportedly still selling, not that long ago, and SE4 is going retail soon.

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

He said he was going to give out just SE2 source

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

SE II was written in Visual Basic, BTW, not Pascal or Delphi (Object Pascal, frankly). So possessing that doesn't get you very close to even SE III. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SE IV Source Code
 

Hence why it's being given away. A parallel would be Ford giving away the engine designs to the Capri. You could get them illegaly if you really wanted to and even if you did it wouldn't do you any good. So give them away and people might like you more

Compare that to Volition giving away the engine, but not the graphics, names and models, from FreeSpace 2. You can tweak and rebuild it all you like but without re-graphicing the entire game and writing a whole new campaign you couldn't sell it. Then again as FreeSpace 3 isn't going to happen, infact what was the last new space shoot em'up you heard of that was even nearly as good as FS2?